Reliance Jio Infocomm

Reliance Jio Infocomm is going big on investing in blockchain technology, specifically to create its own version of cryptocurrency- JioCoin. Cryptocurrencies are not legally recognised in India, given that challenge, it will be interesting to watch how JioCoin does after it is launched.

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What is it? The number of years for which all firms in the Price Waterhouse (PW) network have been barred from auditing listed companies and intermediaries (such as brokers), according to an order by the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi).

Why is it important? The market regulator has found the audit firm guilty in the nine-year-old Rs 7,136 crore Satyam Computer Services scam, saying that Price Waterhouse was in connivance with the main wrongdoers of the accounting fraud and did not comply with auditing standards. The company, in response, has said was no intentional wrong by PW firms and that it was confident of getting a stay from a court before Sebi’s order comes into force.

Tell me more: In January 2009, B Ramalinga Raju, the then chairman of Satyam, shocked the corporate world by admitting to have inflated the firm’s revenues and profits over several years in India’s biggest accounting scam, which is sometimes referred to as ‘India’s Enron‘.

Why is it important? The dip is mainly due to a decline in spending by banking and financial services clients. With the exception of BFSI (banking, financial services and insurance) and retail, all industry verticals grew above 9.5% on an annual basis. With a tough 2017 for reasons including slow growth (mainly due to firms’ inability to grow their digital businesses) and the United States’ protectionist measures, for the IT industry, TCS’ business largely continued uninterrupted and also, won a $2.25 billion contract over nine years (the biggest by an Indian firm) from Nielsen.

Tell me more: In the quarter ended December, TCS saw a gross addition of 12,534 employees, taking its total headcount to 390,880.

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What is it? The size of the team Reliance Jio Infocomm plans to create to work on blockchain technology. This technology is essentially a decentralised and distributed digital ledger where information exists as a shared and reconciled database.

Why is it important? Besides working on multiple applications such as smart contracts and supply chain management logistics, Reliance Jio plans to work on blockchain technology’s most popular application of cryptocurrency to create JioCoin. However, it remains to see how the firm’s newest ambition takes off given that cryptocurrencies are not legally recognised in India. Recently, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said cryptocurrencies are not legal tender and those transacting in it are doing so at their own risk.

Tell me more: Reliance Jio, which disrupted the telecom market in the last few months with its competitively-priced plans, has a total customer base of 152 million (as of November).

Why is it important? Besides being the first woman lawyer to take this route, Malhotra will be only the seventh woman judge since independence in the Supreme Court. At present, of the 25 judges in India’s apex court, 24 are men. The lone woman judge is Justice R Banumathi, whose term runs till July 2020.

Tell me more: The government still has to clear her appointment. As per rules, the government can return the recommendations of the collegium once, and even then the collegium has the final say on the appointment.

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What is it? The seeding that Novak Djokovic, six-time Australian Open winner, was awarded yesterday for the 2018 tournament, which begins in Melbourne on Monday.

Why is it important? In the last six years, Djokovic has never been seeded outside the top two at a grand slam. But a forgettable 2017, plagued by poor results and an elbow injury that saw his year end at the halfway mark, have resulted in the ranking of the 12-time grand slam winner slip. At Melbourne, Djokovic has a difficult draw, and could face Gael Monfils, fourth seed Alexander Zverev and 2014 champion Stan Wawrinka to reach the semi-finals.

Tell me more: Last year’s winner Roger Federer is seeded second behind Rafael Nadal. In the women’s draw, the top two seeds are Simona Halep and Caroline Wozniacki.

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What is it? The number of websites that help people buy rare animals and their body parts – either by giving space to ads or by enabling trade.

Why is it important? These websites, collated by the Wildlife Crime Control Bureau, include popular ones such as Amazon, Snapdeal, Quickr, Olx, eBay and Youtube. They go against laws that prevent trade in over 1,800 species of wild animals, plants and their derivatives.

$3.9 billion

Why is it important? The fall, aided by a decline in gold prices, is likely to help narrow down current account deficit (excess of imports of goods, services and investments over exports), and the similar but narrower metric of trade deficit. India has recently introduced gold monetisation schemes to curb gold imports, the second-biggest component of the import bill after crude oil.

Tell me more: India’s trade deficit fell to a record low of $5.07 billion in March 2016 while its current account deficit narrowed to 1.3% of the GDP in the third quarter of 2015-16 compared to 1.5% in the same period in the previous year.

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What is it? The number of months in the hands of India’s cricketing board to implement reforms recommended by Lodha committee.

Why is it important? The reforms would help bring transparency and accountability in India’s most powerful and richest sports body. It is also likely to lead to resignations of BCCI president Anurag Thakur (Himachal Pradesh), Sharad Pawar (aged 75, Mumbai) and N Srinivasan (aged 71, Tamil Nadu) from their respective positions in the regional cricketing bodies. The committee recommended allowing only one vote per state (even if they have more than one cricket association), banning ministers and civil servants from being in BCCI’s board or that of their respective state associations, capping the age limit of BCCI office bearers at 70 years.

Tell me more: Other recommendations accepted by the apex court are: each of the office-bearers would have a three-year term and can contest a maximum of three terms with a mandatory cooling-off period between two terms, and no person can hold office at the BCCI and state associations simultaneously.

Rs 15,000 crore

Why is it important? This will help Reliance Jio, which has already covered 70% of India with 270,000 km of fibre optic cables and 92,000 towers, to enable it to provide 4G wireless services to 90% of the country. This is likely to lead to a price war (recently, Idea Cellular and Bharti Airtel made their data services cheaper to retain customers) even though Reliance Jio says it would not give discounts to attract and retain customers.

Tell me more: The additional investment will be by way of rights issue (offering of shares by a company at a special price to its existing investors according to the proportion of shares held by them). The company’s services, which is now available for 15 lakh people including employees, vendors and their referrals, would be launched for all later this year. Reliance Industries has spent Rs 1.3 lakh crore on Reliance Jio so far and some analysts believe that the company would exceed its initial investment forecast of Rs 1.5 lakh crore by the launch time.

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What is it? The number of Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel killed in an encounter with naxalites in Bihar’s jungles in the Aurangabad district on Monday.

Why is it important? This is one of the biggest casualties of the elite Commando Battalion for Resolute Action (COBRA), a specialised unit of the CRPF trained in guerilla tactics and jungle warfare. This comes a few months after reports emerged about decline in naxal violence in some of the north-eastern states including Bihar and Jharkhand. The number of people killed by naxalites, naxal attacks on security forces, number of naxal cadres killed and number of naxalites arrested or surrendered – have all decreased between 2010 and 2015.

Tell me more:Three naxalites have reportedly been killed in the clashes, which followed after an IED blast killed the 10 COBRA commandos, leaving five injured.